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I'm not convinced by either side that this action is or is not a clear violation of anyone's Constitutional rights. But I'm pretty sure the Trump admin will get away with everything in this particular instance.
The facts on the ground are very much isomorphic to the situation involving "indefinite detention" of "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo Bay pursuant to the Patriot Act and AUMF. Those sorts of detentions have been tested and mostly held up for over twenty years at this point. And that was with a somewhat less favorable Supreme Court. Thus the legality, if not the morality, has stood the test of time.
A few things I haven't seen anyone actually contest:
A) All of the individuals subject to the deportation here were in fact foreign nationals.
B) Likewise, they were all being held on at least probable cause for a crime.
C) The President is 100% allowed to enter deals with foreign states for, among other things, detention of criminals.
If the Alien Enemies Act actually creates/supports the authority that the Trump Administration claims it does (in this case, the authority to 'relocate' foreign nationals pursuant to the President's decree), and these powers fall under the President's Military Authority/Wartime powers, then it is pretty cut-and-dried that these actions aren't subject to Judicial review by mere Federal Judges.
Which is different from saying that the prisoners/detainees aren't entitled to due process and access to Federal Courts. The impact of Boumediene v. Bush is that they can file Habeus Petitions... from their current location. Which actually solves for the due process problem. If the Judge wants to review the validity of their detention he can do so! But if the detention is invalid, as it was for Boumediene himself, then the remedy isn't "take him back to the U.S. and start over." Its, "release him to his country of origin/any country that will take him."
Which, uh, is pretty much what Trump wants.
The wins for Trump seem to be threefold:
Getting 'dangerous' immigrants off of U.S. Soil ASAP. The odds of these guys ever being returned to the U.S. are EXTREMELY slim.
Kicking open a door for expansion of the President's powers to deport illegals over the Judiciary's objections.
"Forcing" Democrats to very vocally stick up for some extremely unsavory people.
And the Judge has already racked up 2 L's.
Trying and failing to force the planes to turn around once they were already in the air, with zero method to enforce it.
Directly undermining the appearance of Court legitimacy by doing so, which undermines the Judiciary going forward.
If I were the Judge, I'd probably have ordered instead that Prisoners so transported should get expedited Habeas reviews, and then ordering the return of any that had their Petitions granted, at which point, if the Admin refused, now I've got some juice to claim unconstitutional overreach.
Indeed, I'm not sure how the Judge wins this. When I game it out in my head, even if he starts throwing out contempt orders to try to gain compliance, Trump can just promise pardons to anyone who gets convicted of contempt, so nobody will feel a need to comply.
Oh, and thanks to Joe Biden, Trump can plausibly offer pre-emptive blanket pardons, as well. WHOOPS.
The Judge CAN win if SCOTUS either strikes down the entire Alien Enemies Act (unlikely) OR severely limits its scope enough to make these actions beyond the pale.
But even then, Congress can Amend the act (which it has before) to extend it to cover the exact powers Trump claims now.
lol. If there were any truly innocent parties swept up in this particular action, the Admin can say "Whoops, here's a flight home, our treat" and its forgotten in a week.
The only way I see the admin taking a serious popularity/approval hit is if they snagged some U.S. citizens and one or more of said U.S. citizens ends up killed or tortured or otherwise gets very badly harmed in this process.
Its an outside possibility.
Anyway, some guy on Twitter challenged me on this exact point, with a claim that SCOTUS would affirm the Judge's ruling unanimously, so at his suggestion I created a Manifold Markets Prediction market on this point:
https://manifold.markets/WMathieu/supreme-court-rules-unanimously-to
At which point he apparently bought shares of no so, lol.
I'm certain I saw this argument in real time.
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